Poppy Burton
Poppy Burton follows how major artists and pop culture institutions evolve over time, tracking new work, live shows and industry battles around rights and representation. She covers music and entertainment for NME, with a particular focus on legacy acts, large-scale tours, documentaries and the political currents that shape what artists can make and how fans experience it.
Legacy artists and long careers
Burton returns often to stories about established artists who continue to create and reframe their catalogues. She covers Keith Richards discussing Mick Jagger’s refusal to stop making new music, using direct quotes to show how long-running partnerships keep driving major bands forward. She applies the same lens to Kate Bush’s plans to make new music after years spent on archive work and redesigning her online presence, treating the decision as a pivot from curation back to creation.
She highlights how institutions built around legacy artists keep evolving, such as the first official Beatles fan destination opening at 3 Savile Row in London, tying the site back to the band’s rooftop concert and positioning it as a physical hub for long-term fandom. In coverage of Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Elton John leading UK artists in urging Keir Starmer to protect their work from AI copyright infringement, she shows how veteran musicians are at the centre of debates about technology, ownership and cultural memory. Across these pieces, her angle is consistent: long careers are not static, and older artists remain active in both creative output and cultural politics.
Live performances, tours and festivals
Live shows and touring news are another core strand of Burton’s work, where she blends fast-turnaround reporting with detail on setlists, special moments and wider context. She covers Alkaline Trio cancelling a 2026 UK tour due to medical issues, treating it as both a logistical update for fans and a disruption in the band’s long-running relationship with the UK live circuit. At the other end of the spectrum, she documents massive homecoming moments, such as Wolf Alice’s London Finsbury Park show where the band cover Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” spotlighting the choice as a bridge between generations of alternative rock.
Her reporting on Florence + The Machine opening a UK and Ireland tour by debuting new songs from ‘Everybody Scream’ and bringing IDLES’ Mark Bowen onstage emphasises collaborations, surprises and the narrative of a tour’s first night. At festivals, she is attentive to how offstage events shape performances: her piece on Weezer’s Coachella 2025 set notes that the band play without addressing the recent arrest and shooting involving bassist Scott Shriner’s wife, framing the silence itself as part of the story. These articles show her interest in the intersection of live spectacle, fan expectation and the realities bands carry onto the stage.
Music on screen and fandom-driven storytelling
Burton often covers music and entertainment as they move onto screens, focusing on documentaries and series that speak to long-term fan communities. Her piece on Netflix’s Take That docuseries highlights the use of 35 years of archive footage and new interviews with former band members, treating the project as a way to narrate the beginning of the end of the group’s 1990s era and to revisit a formative chapter for pop audiences. She extends this interest in storytelling and public scrutiny to film festivals, reporting on the Berlin Film Festival’s statement defending its jury after a media storm and arguing that artists should be expected to speak on political issues raised to them. Here, she frames the festival not just as an industry event but as a site where art, politics and public expectation collide.
Her coverage of George R.R. Martin describing finishing the Game of Thrones books as the “curse” of his life similarly centres the pressures of prolonged fandom and unfinished narratives. In a piece on Paapa Essiedu receiving racist death threats after being cast as Snape in an upcoming Harry Potter series, she focuses on the backlash and the racial dynamics of modern franchise casting, showing how entertainment decisions reverberate through online communities and fan cultures. Together, these articles underline her preoccupation with how stories around music and adjacent pop culture are contested in public, and how artists and actors navigate the weight of their audiences.
Industry politics, rights and activism
Burton covers the politics of the music industry with an emphasis on copyright, technology and activism. Her reporting on Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Elton John and other UK artists urging political leaders to protect creative work from AI infringement makes clear that questions of artificial intelligence are not abstract but directly tied to the livelihoods and legacies of working musicians. In podcast work associated with NME, she is linked to discussions of activism at the GRAMMYs and disputes such as Spotify and major labels suing the activist and archive group Anna’s Archive, situating her in conversations where artist rights, corporate power and preservation collide.
Some of her NME reporting is carried by regional radio outlets, extending these industry-focused stories beyond the magazine’s core readership and into local broadcast contexts. Across this strand of her work she treats legal and technological developments as part of the cultural story, showing how they influence what artists can release, how fans can access it and who benefits from the systems that organise contemporary music.
Work across music and culture outlets
Alongside her NME coverage, Burton’s professional profile lists bylines across a range of music and culture platforms, including rock-focused magazines and alternative culture sites such as Kerrang!, Far Out Magazine and Soundsphere, as well as niche outlets and aggregators. This spread reinforces the through-line of her beat: she consistently writes news-driven pieces and features about musicians, tours, documentaries and fan cultures, whether the subject is mainstream pop, legacy rock or more specialist scenes.
Viewed together, Burton’s body of work is defined less by one narrow genre than by a consistent focus on how major cultural figures and institutions move, change and are contested over time. She pays attention to the moments where performance, storytelling and politics intersect, making her coverage particularly attuned to artists with deep histories, high public stakes and engaged fan bases.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alison Brinkworth
Alison Brinkworth is a freelance journalist who treats music as a gateway into place, history and everyday life, often through exhibitions, performances and city-centre events. She covers music within the wider cultural and lifestyle scene, leaning toward accessible, on-the-ground stories framed by familiar artists, venues and local attractions. Her work often focuses on music exhibitions and attractions built around well-known performers, alongside theatre reviews, live events and city attractions. She brings a lifestyle, travel and human-interest sensibility, using interviews and personal stories to show how people spend their time. With over 25 years of experience across print, digital, social media and internal communications, she writes clear, factual, audience-facing articles with dates, locations and organisers, suited to listings, guides and practical recommendations.